Wrestler with ‘mat herpes’ surprised by reaction to his warning about California championship

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Rick Flovin shows a poster made for his son, Blake Flovin, in their home in Sunnyvale, Calif., Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Blake Flovin, a Mitty H.S. senior, contracted herpes during a wrestling tournament in mid-Feb. He has many lesions on his face and as his dad says, he looks like "Elephant man." The family wants to stop the state tournament from taking place on Friday and they're running out of time, so they're appealing to the media. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

Blake Flovin, center, with his parents, Rena and Rick Flovin, in their home in Sunnyvale, Calif., Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Flovin, a Mitty H.S. senior, contracted herpes during a wrestling tournament in mid-Feb. He has many lesions on his face and as his dad says, he looks like "Elephant man." The family wants to stop the state tournament from taking place on Friday and they're running out of time, so they're appealing to the media. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

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Blake Flovin shows the skin lesions on his forehead and face in his home in Sunnyvale, Calif., Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Flovin, a Mitty H.S. senior, contracted herpes during a wrestling tournament in mid-Feb. He has many lesions on his face and as his dad, Rick, says, he looks like "Elephant man." The family wants to stop the state tournament from taking place on Friday and they're running out of time, so they're appealing to the media. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

Blake Flovin shows the skin lesions on his forehead and face in his home in Sunnyvale, Calif., Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Flovin, a Mitty H.S. senior, contracted herpes during a wrestling tournament in mid-Feb. He has many lesions on his face and as his dad, Rick, says, he looks like "Elephant man." The family wants to stop the state tournament from taking place on Friday and they're running out of time, so they're appealing to the media. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

SUNNYVALE — Blake Flovin braced for the worst when he went public about the virus known as “mat herpes” he believes he contracted while wrestling at a high school tournament in San Jose.

Although the Archbishop Mitty senior didn’t get what he wanted — the postponement of the state wrestling championships in Bakersfield this weekend, to stop the spread of the highly contagious virus — something surprising happened instead.

Rather than the shame and torment the 17-year-old half expected after his splotchy face appeared throughout the media this week, he’s received nothing but support from his friends and fellow wrestlers.

“I’ve gotten a lot of supportive comments — 100 percent,” Blake said Thursday, just two days after he was diagnosed with the “herpes gladiatorum” virus, which will go dormant but can flare up for the rest of his life. The virus has hit a number of wrestling programs across the country through the years.

Since his story broke late Wednesday, Blake’s Facebook and Instagram pages have filled with requests from an even larger group of people who want to “friend” and “follow” him — the equivalent of “atta-boys” for teenagers.

One wrestler in particular, from Fremont, texted him: “Hey Blake. I just read that article and I’m sorry for what happened to you. How do we stand behind you and support you to postpone the tournament?”

The plea to delay the championships was rejected at the state wrestling level, however, as officials with the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports in the state, made it clear the tournament — with 561 wrestlers from 276 schools — will proceed with standard hygiene protocols in place.

“We are confident that our practices, along with an exhaustive medical review of this particular situation, ensure that there is no justification for concern about the spread of a contagious disease at the event,” said Roger Blake, the organization’s executive director.

The virus is most contagious when wrestlers are exhibiting lesions that can infect others. No new cases have been reported, although some wrestlers who competed against Blake have gone to the doctor to check on skin issues they noticed.

“If they had a boo-boo or a bang on their head or something out of the ordinary, they took them to the doctor,” said Central Coast Section Commissioner Duane Morgan, who sent emails to the coaches of all affected wrestlers earlier this week. “At this point in time, there have been no verified cases of anything like herpes that Blake had contact with.”

Morgan said while driving to Bakersfield on Thursday that he’s confident wrestlers will be safe at the tournament because “we’re doing what we need to be doing to protect the kids and the tournament.”

Morgan acknowledged, however, that not all safeguards were in place at the CCS tournament at Independence High School in San Jose last month, when Blake believes he contracted the virus.

In particular, the girls who competed were not given thorough “skin checks” by trainers before their matches because there were no qualified women to perform them, Morgan said. Instead, referees conducted “cursory checks” matside just before each individual match, he said.

“We didn’t have a trainer to get it done — no women officials who were refereeing,” Morgan said, adding that he’s heard of no health issues arising in the girls.

He also acknowledged that keeping the boys bathroom clean at the Independence High tournament — which Blake said was so dirty that boys joked that someone was sure to get pink eye — was a chronic issue.

“We had a custodian in there every hour mopping and cleaning things up,” Morgan said. “We know it’s kind of an issue, not just at Independence High. Kids don’t think they can transmit some stuff to the mat surface.”

There have been several outbreaks over the years among wrestlers in particular, either through skin-to-skin contact or from the mats themselves. In 2007, the Minnesota State High School League suspended all its wrestling programs for nearly three weeks during a herpes gladiatorum outbreak that affected at least two dozen wrestlers.

The championships start Friday. Blake is staying home. His father, Rick Flovin, said it took courage for his son to step forward, but the reaction has helped.

“He said to me, ‘Dad, it’s unbelievable. I haven’t gotten one negative response,’ ” Flovin said. “That made him know he made the right decision.”

Julia Prodis Sulek has been a general assignment reporter for the Bay Area News Group, based in San Jose, her hometown, since the late 1990s. She has covered everything from plane crashes to presidential campaigns, murder trials to immigration debates. Her specialty is narrative storytelling.

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